Tillage has been and will always be integral to crop production. Tillage can result in the degradation of soil, water, and air quality. Of all farm management practices, tillage may have the greatest impact on the environment. A wide variety of tillage equipment, practices and systems are available to farmers, providing opportunities to enhance environmental performance. These opportunities hav...

Literature reporting the development of conservation tillage and the research that has been conducted on nematode control in crops grown in conservation tillage systems is reviewed. Effects of different types of conservation tillage on population densities of various nematode species in monocropping and multicropping systems, effects of tillage on nematode distribution in the soil profile, effe...

In 1987, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA-ARS) National Sedimentation Laboratory, in cooper­ ation with the Mississippi Agricultural and Forestry Experi­ ment Station (MAFES) and the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), initiated an interdisciplinary research project to develop profitable and environmentally sustainable conservation production systems for silty upland...

Appropriate tillage plays an important role in mitigating the emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG) in regions with higher crop yields, but the emission situations of some reduced tillage systems such as subsoiling, harrow tillage and rotary tillage are not comprehensively studied. The objective of this study was to evaluate the emission characteristics of GHG (CH4 and N2O) under four reduced til...

and Implications Forage mass and nutritional quality were measured in the total forage monthly from May through September and in live forage in the upper half of the sward in June and August and related to body weights, body condition scores and daily methane emissions in pastures grazed at a stocking rate of 1.98 cows per hectare by continuous, rotational or strip-stocking at a limited forage ...

Subsoil compaction can result in unfavourable soil physical conditions and hinder the root growth of maize. The effects of deep tillage and conventional tillage on soil physical properties and root growth of maize were studied during 2010–2011 at two sites (loam at Hebi and clay at Luohe) in central China. The results showed that soil penetration resistance, bulk density, water content and root...

A field study was conducted to assess the effects of soil tillage practices and straw management on soil CO2, and yield-scaled CO2 emissions in a rain-fed summer corn field on the Loess Plateau. Tillage treatments consisted of sub-soiling tillage (CP), no tillage (NT) and moldboard plow tillage (CT). Wheat straw was removed from half of the CP, NT and CT plots after harvest, allowing us to test...

In the Mediterranean zone semi-natural vegetation and diverse mountain-cropping systems have been converted into monocultures with low tree densities, leaving the soil unprotected. Soil loss and runoff over a three-year period were monitored in hillside erosion plots (35% slope and 144 m 2 in area) with almond (Prunus amygdalus) trees under three soil-management systems: no-tillage with sage (S...

Physical, chemical, and biological fractions of SOC pools, such as coarse particulate organic matter C (CPOM-C), permanganate oxidizable C (KMnO4-C), microbial biomass carbon (MBC), and mineralizable C (Cmin) respond to changes in management practices and provide sensitive indication of changes in the SOC dynamics than commonly reported total soil C alone. We hypothesized that tillage and N-fer...